Author Articleshttp://mentalfloss.com/author-articles/50396
en10 Things You Didn’t Know About Koalashttp://mentalfloss.com/article/59114/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-koalas
<div class="field-group-format group_meta field-group-div group-meta speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-field-enhanced-authors field-type-computed field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/molly-oldfield">Molly Oldfield</a></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_categories field-group-div group-categories categories speed-none effect-none"><div class="field field-name-field-category-url field-type-computed field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">filed under: <a href="/section/animals" class="author-writes-about-link">Animals</a></div></div></div></div></div><div class="primary-image">
<img src="http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_640x430/public/istock_000002755810_small_0.jpg" width="640" height="430" alt="" /> </div><div class="field-group-format group_image_credit field-group-div group-image-credit speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-field-image-credit field-type-text field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Image credit:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>istock</p>
</div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Sure, they're cute, and they certainly look cuddly. But here are a few other, more surprising things you might not have known about koalas.</p>
<p><strong>1.</strong> Koalas hug trees to keep cool. Scientists used thermal cameras to watch some koalas hanging out in trees and saw that when the weather was warm, the animals moved to lower parts of the trees and pressed themselves close to the trunks, wedging their bottoms right into the coolest spots.</p>
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<p><strong>2.</strong> In captivity, koalas exhibit more lesbian behavior than straight. Sexual encounters have been known to involve up to five females. They last twice as long as heterosexual encounters.</p>
<p><strong>3.</strong> Fifty to 90 percent of female koalas have chlamydia. The symptoms in koalas are chest infections, conjunctivitis, and "wet-bottom," which looks like what you’d imagine. It can be fatal unless treated with antibiotics and can leave the koalas sterile. Here's the catch: Predators aren’t that important to koala population control, but <a href="https://www.savethekoala.com/about-koalas/threats-koala" target="_blank">chlamydia might be</a>. In the late '90s, chlamydia-free koalas were introduced into Mount Eccles National Park in Victoria, which had a huge Manna Gum tree population. Without chlamydia to control the population, koala numbers doubled every few years, and thousands of hectares of forest were at threat <a href="http://issuu.com/vnpa/docs/park_watch_september_2013_-_no_254/35" target="_blank">until hormonal contraception was introduced</a>. In other areas where chlamydia-free koalas were introduced, the koalas killed the trees and then died of starvation [<a href="http://www.foe.org.au/sites/default/files/Strzelecki%20Koala%20Issues%20and%20Forest%20Stewardship%20Council%20Certification.pdf" target="_blank">PDF</a>]. When koalas are stressed, chlamydia—which is normally harmless—limits the population growth. Now, rather than overpopulation, a combination of habitat loss and a retrovirus is making chlamydia a problem even as the population dwindles.</p>
<p><strong>4.</strong> Koalas fingerprints are virtually indistinguishable from human ones, so much so that they can be mistaken for one another in criminal investigations. The animals' hands are covered in warts.</p>
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<p><strong>5.</strong> Although koalas eat around <a href="http://www.koalahospital.org.au/education/koala-faqs" target="_blank">half a kilogram </a>of eucalyptus leaves a day, they’re very picky, tending to choose around 30 of the 600 varieties of eucalyptus trees out there. Koalas prefer large trees, but avoid those with low protein content and nauseating toxins. The problem is that two trees of the same species <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2005/02/17/1304305.htm" target="_blank">right next to each other</a> can have wildly different toxin levels, forcing the koala to rely on their smell. Eucalyptus leaves are very low in calcium, forcing the koalas to go to the ground and <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8622831" target="_blank">eat dirt</a>. They are reported to smell like big cough drops because of all that eucalyptus.</p>
<p><strong>6.</strong> Because of their diet koalas have an unusually large caecum—part of the digestive system—to help them digest their diet of eucalyptus leaves. On the other hand, they have tiny brains because brains use a lot of energy and their diets don’t give them much to work with. They can only stay awake for four hours a day.</p>
<p><strong>7.</strong> Koala joeys feed on their mother’s "pap," which is a kind of soup the koalas make internally and excrete—so yes, baby koalas eat their mother’s droppings. They're full of microorganisms and get their tiny digestive tracts ready for a lifetime of leaves for lunch.</p>
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<p><strong>8.</strong> The anima's scientific name, <em>Phascolarctos cinereus</em>, loosely means "ash-grey pocket-bear," but koalas are not bears: They’re marsupials. Their closest living relative is the wombat.</p>
<p><strong>9.</strong> Some people might tell you that "koala" means "don’t drink"; don’t believe them. When koalas get really thirsty they do what any intelligent animal would do and drink from streams or <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-411767/Koalas-drink-swimming-pools-battle-survive-Australias-drought.html" target="_blank">swimming pools</a>. According Etymology Online, koala comes from the Dharuk name for animal, which has been given in different ways including koola, kulla, and kula.</p>
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<p><strong>10.</strong> Mick is an incredibly rare white koala with white fur and dark eyes and nose. Albino koalas are white with pink eyes and noses.</p>
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<span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">October 2, 2014 - 7:00pm</span></span>
</span>Thu, 02 Oct 2014 23:00:52 +0000Rebecca OConnell59114 at http://mentalfloss.com10 Things You Might Not Know About A Christmas Carolhttp://mentalfloss.com/article/54245/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-christmas-carol
<div class="field-group-format group_meta field-group-div group-meta speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-field-enhanced-authors field-type-computed field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/molly-oldfield">Molly Oldfield</a></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_categories field-group-div group-categories categories speed-none effect-none"><div class="field field-name-field-category-url field-type-computed field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">filed under: <a href="/section/holidays" class="author-writes-about-link">holidays</a>, <a href="/section/lists" class="author-writes-about-link">Lists</a>, <a href="/section/literature" class="author-writes-about-link">literature</a></div></div></div></div></div><div class="primary-image">
<img src="http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_640x430/public/927px-charles_dickens-a_christmas_carol-title_page-first_edition_1843.jpg" width="640" height="430" alt="" /> </div><div class="field-group-format group_image_credit field-group-div group-image-credit speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-field-image-credit field-type-text field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Image credit:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Wikimedia Commons</p>
</div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><strong>1.</strong> Dickens was inspired to write <em>A Christmas Carol</em> in 1843 after he spoke at a charity night to raise money for the Manchester Athenaeum in England—an institution dedicated to "advancement and diffusion of knowledge." The 31-year-old spoke alongside the young Benjamin Disraeli, who would later become prime minister of Great Britain. After their talk, Dickens went on a long nocturnal walk later and had the idea for his "little Christmas book." </p>
<p><strong>2.</strong> He started the story in October 1843 and wrote obsessively for six weeks. As Dickens wrote, he wept, laughed, and wandered around London at night "when all sober folks had gone to bed." He finished the novella at the end of November so it could be published in time for Christmas. <em>A Christmas Carol</em> hit the shops on December 17, 1843, and sold out in three days.</p>
<p><strong>3.</strong> Dickens was the first famous writer to give public readings of his work—and his first reading was <em>A Christmas Carol. </em>The reading took place in front of a crowd of 2000 people in the town hall of Birmingham, England, 10 years after the book was published. Dickens opened the reading by saying, “Ladies and gentleman—I have said that I bear an old love towards Birmingham and Birmingham men; let me amend a small omission, and add Birmingham women too. This ring I wear on my finger now is an old Birmingham gift, and if by rubbing it I could raise the spirit that was obedient to Aladdin’s ring, I heartily assure you that my first instruction to that genius on the spot should be to place himself at Birmingham’s disposal in the best of causes. I now have the pleasure of reading to you tonight <em>A Christmas Carol</em> in four staves.”</p>
<p><strong>4.</strong> Rather than simply read extracts from his stories, Dickens loved to perform them—so he created a special version of <em>A Christmas Carol </em>for exactly that purpose. He tore the pages out of an original book, and stuck them into a new, large leafed, blank paged book. Then he filleted the text, cutting out descriptive scenes to create a performance script. He added stage directions for himself all over the text. Such an annotated copy is called a prompt copy.</p>
<p><strong>5.</strong> There is one extant copy of <em>A Christmas Carol</em> created by Dickens himself and it is owned by the Berg Collection of English and American literature at the New York Public Library (NYPL). I discovered it when researching my book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Museum-Treasures-Precious/dp/1770852573" target="_blank"><em>The Secret Museum</em></a> and wrote about its story.</p>
<p><strong>6.</strong> Dickens <span>visited America twice for reading tours. During the second tour—which took place at Christmastime in 1867—he </span>used the prompt copy at the NYPL, once at a Steinway piano hall, and once at a church in Brooklyn. People camped out in the snow to be sure of a ticket. By opening time, the line was a mile long. The second tour earned him £19,000—about £1.4 million in today’s money, and far more than he was earning from the royalties of his books.</p>
<p><strong>7.</strong> When he was 32, Mark Twain listened to one of the then-55-year-old Dickens’ New York performances. He <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=VqHFkfe1P-0C&amp;pg=PA111&amp;lpg=PA111&amp;dq=He+did+not+emerge+upon+the+stage+--+that+is+rather+too+deliberate+a+word+--+he+strode.&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=vkO2IGE-IU&amp;sig=rGODrulkaaJtpgJstPTzbVEAXfQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=562wUtr3NdSssATxmoDIDA&amp;ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=He%20did%20not%20emerge%20upon%20the%20stage%20--%20that%20is%20rather%20too%20deliberate%20a%20word%20--%20he%20strode.&amp;f=false" target="_blank">described the writer's entrance</a> thus:</p>
<blockquote><p>Promptly at 8 P.M., unannounced, and without waiting for any stamping or clapping of hands to call him out, a tall, "spry," (if I may say it,) thin-legged old gentleman, gotten up regardless of expense, especially as to shirt-front and diamonds, with a bright red flower in his button-hole, gray beard and moustache, bald head, and with side hair brushed fiercely and tempestuously forward, as if its owner were sweeping down before a gale of wind, the very Dickens came! He did not emerge upon the stage -- that is rather too deliberate a word -- he strode.</p>
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<p>Twain’s review was not favourable: “There is no heart,” he said. “No feeling – it is nothing but glittering frostwork.” Bah Humbug!</p>
<p><strong>8.</strong> On reading days, Dickens would drink two tablespoons of rum mixed with cream for breakfast, a pint of champagne for tea and, half an hour before he went on stage, he would knock back a sherry with a raw egg beaten into it. During the interval of his reading he would sip beef tea, and at bedtime he’d have a bowl of soup.</p>
<p><strong>9.</strong> Just as Dickens’ first public reading was of <em>A Christmas Carol, </em>so was his last. The author <span>had decided to retire from readings because his health was failing, and his</span> final performance took place at St. James’ Hall in Piccadilly on March 15, 1870. His son recorded his last words to the audience: "...from these garish lights I vanish now for evermore, with one heartfelt, grateful, respectful, and affectionate farewell."</p>
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<p><strong>10.</strong> While I was writing <a href="http://qi.com/the-secret-museum"><em>The Secret Museum</em></a>, I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to bring some treasures in the book back to life. As Christmas drew near, I thought about asking someone to read from Dickens’ prompt copy of <em>A Christmas Carol</em>—maybe the Ghost of Christmas Present was sprinkling some good cheer above me. Neil Gaiman would be perfect I decided, so I sent him an email. To my delight he said yes immediately!</p>
<p>In December 2013, as an early birthday present to <em>A Christmas Carol</em>, I <a href="http://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2013/12/15/charles-dickens-christmas-carol-neil-gaiman-and-molly-oldfield">welcomed an audience to the New York Public Library</a> and talked about the prompt copy and other Dickensian treasures in the library’s collection (including a letter opener made out of the paw of his deceased pet cat Bob, named after Bob Cratchit). Then, the very wonderful Neil Gaiman read us <em>A Christmas Carol</em>, using the very same prompt copy Dickens used back in 1867.</p>
<p>There were carol singers, there was Christmas décor, there was a sublime reading of the Carol, I signed lots of books to be given as Christmas presents, and a very happy, Christmassy crowd skipped out of the NYPL. </p>
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<span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">December 17, 2013 - 4:30pm</span></span>
</span>Tue, 17 Dec 2013 21:30:53 +0000Erin54245 at http://mentalfloss.com6 Secret Treasures in the World's Most Famous Museumshttp://mentalfloss.com/article/50397/6-secret-treasures-worlds-most-famous-museums
<div class="field-group-format group_meta field-group-div group-meta speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-field-enhanced-authors field-type-computed field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/molly-oldfield">Molly Oldfield</a></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_categories field-group-div group-categories categories speed-none effect-none"><div class="field field-name-field-category-url field-type-computed field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">filed under: <a href="/section/books" class="author-writes-about-link">books</a>, <a href="/section/history" class="author-writes-about-link">History</a>, <a href="/section/lists" class="author-writes-about-link">Lists</a></div></div></div></div></div><div class="primary-image">
<img src="http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_640x430/public/secret-museum.jpg" width="640" height="430" alt="" /> </div><div class="field-group-format group_image_credit field-group-div group-image-credit speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-field-image-credit field-type-text field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Image credit:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>HarperCollins</p>
</div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><em>Molly Oldfield studied at Oxford before becoming a writer and researcher on the BBC television show QI. She has worked on a string of bestselling QI books, writes the weekly QI column for the Daily Telegraph and is a researcher on a BBC4 radio show, The Museum of Curiosity. She met curators and delved into museum basements for her first book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Museum-Treasures-Display/dp/1770852573/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1367506638&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+secret+museum" target="_blank">The Secret Museum</a>, which was published in February 2013. For more information, go <a href="http://qi.com/the-secret-museum" target="_blank">here</a>.</em></p>
<h4>1. A Flag from the Battle of Trafalgar - The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London</h4>
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<p><em>HarperCollins</em></p>
<p>This enormous flag was flying from the back of a Spanish warship, San Ildefonso, as it fought against the British fleet led by Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. Its second big moment came when it was hung from the roof of Saint Paul’s Cathedral during Nelson’s funeral service on January 9, 1806, alongside a French flag also captured at Trafalgar, to symbolize the great victory Nelson had won with his bravery, his superior strategy and, finally, his life.</p>
<p>I went to see it inside its cardboard box in storage at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It is red and yellow striped, with the arms of Castile and Leon in the middle. The name of the ship is written on the hoist in ink: SAN ILDEFONSO. It has holes in it from where it was shot at during the Battle of Trafalgar, and is frayed on the edges from when it flapped in the winds on the stormy seas.</p>
<p>The museum keeps the flag in storage because it’s very fragile and they simply don’t have the space to hang it. It is 10 metres (32.8 feet) long and 14.5 metres (47.5 feet) high and is the biggest flag in their collection. “It’s a whopper,” said Barbara Tomlinson, curator of antiquities since 1979. "We haven’t ever displayed it officially, but in the 1960s the museum was very naughty and hung it for one day from the front of the Queen’s House," one of main museum buildings. But "it trailed on the floor as it was too big—we wouldn’t get away with that now."</p>
<h4>2. Harrison Schmitt’s Spacesuit - The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum Archive, Washington D.C.</h4>
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<p><em>HarperCollins</em></p>
<p>In Nepal, people think the dead live on the moon. Visiting Apollo astronauts have been asked, "When you were on the moon, did you happen to see my auntie?" Since my trip to the storage facility of the National Air and Space Museum, when I look at the moon, I see hundreds of spacesuits, lying quietly in the cold, and two knees, thickly coated in moon dust.</p>
<p>The space suit storage facility Is located, rather appropriately, in Suitland, Maryland—a metro ride from central Washington D.C. A conservator and a curator opened a spacey, silver door, walked us into a middle room like an airlock, and then into a room filled with spacesuits in stasis. The room is narrow, and lined with hundreds of headless bodies on metal bunk beds. In total, there are 287 suits in the collection, but only a little more than half of these are in storage at any time. Each one is referred to by the name of the astronaut who wore it, and each is displayed on a mannequin and laid out flat on its back on the metal bunk beds, five to six bunks high. We pulled back a sheet and uncovered a body.</p>
<p>It was the spacesuit of Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt of Apollo 17, the only scientist to walk on the moon (and the man who took one of the most famous photographs of all time, a photograph of our planet called "The Blue Marble," of the whole Earth lit up by the sun). His spacesuit is covered in grey dust, especially the knees because he spent his time on the moon crawling around collecting rocks. It looks like ash, but it is moon dust.</p>
<p>The moon dust is the reason why this suit is not on display. Most of the suits from the Apollo missions were dry cleaned, but Schmitt's wasn't—his was the last mission to the moon, and NASA decided to keep the suits just as they were when the astronauts returned to our planet. There isn’t currently a way to display the suit safely without destroying it and its otherworldly dust.</p>
<p>I also got to see Neil Armstrong’s suit, and the boots he wore to take his "one giant leap for mankind."</p>
<h4>3. A Piece of Newton’s Apple Tree - The Royal Society, London</h4>
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<p><em>HarperCollins</em></p>
<p>I headed downstairs into the basement of the Royal Society (one of the oldest scientific academies in the world), which is stuffed with a quarter of a million manuscripts made up of the musings, publications, and letters of the greatest scientific minds that have ever lived. Mixed in among the books and writings is a piece of Isaac Newton’s apple tree—the one he was sitting beneath when he first considered the idea of gravity.</p>
<p>Pretty much everyone has heard the story about how Newton first described gravity. He was sitting underneath an apple tree when an apple fell from it and bounced off his head. Newton wondered why. His answer? A thing he called gravity. Anyone who has looked deeper into the tale comes up against people saying it wasn’t true. But Newton knew the value of a good anecdote and told it himself. In the Royal Society library, there is a first-hand account of him describing the event to William Stukeley, author of <em>Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life</em> (1752). You can <a href="http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/OTHE00001" target="_blank">read it here</a> if you like. So the apple tree really did inspire Newton, even if the apple didn’t fall on his head.</p>
<p>Just as Newton had never before considered why it was that apples fall to the ground, I’d never thought about which actual apple tree had inspired him—until I saw several pieces of it behind the scenes at the Royal Society. There are two fragments, as well as two rulers and a prism made from the wood of the tree from his childhood home (it is now dead, but has been re-grafted).</p>
<p>One of the fragments is in a little pink plastic bag, because it had just been on an adventure, up into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2010 so that it could experience zero gravity. The plan was also to drop a real apple on the space station and film whether it was subject to gravity or not. They weren’t able to do the test because an astronaut who didn’t know what they were up to—she will remain nameless—saw the apple lying around and ate it. They could hardly pop out to the shops, so they used a pear instead.</p>
<h4>4. The Diamond Sutra - the British Library</h4>
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<p><em>HarperCollins</em></p>
<p>I first heard the words of <em>The Diamond Sutra</em> on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. Frances Wood, curator of Chinese works at the British Library, was the guest. She chose, as her first disc, a recording of Buddhist monks and nuns singing <em>The Diamond Sutra</em>.</p>
<p>I had the radio on in the background, but when I heard the enchanting sound of clanging bells and soulful song, I stopped to listen carefully. Before long, the show’s presenter, Kirsty Young, piped up: "That was a recording of Buddhist Monks and nuns of the Fo Guang Shan temple in Taiwan singing <em>The Diamond Sutra</em> … You said, Frances Wood, that we accrued merit just by playing this?" Frances confirmed, "We did indeed."</p>
<p>Frances went on to talk about the British Library’s copy of <em>The Diamond Sutra</em>. It has the date it was printed marked on the last page—868. This date makes it a world treasure, because it is the earliest dated printed book in the world.</p>
<p><em>The Diamond Sutra</em> is a teaching given by the Buddha to his disciple, Subhuti. <em>Sutra</em> is the Sanskrit word for "teaching" and the Buddha asked Subhuti to name the lesson "The Diamond of Transcendent Wisdom." He said the words of the sutra will cut like a diamond blade through worldly illusion to teach those who read or chant it what is real and everlasting.</p>
<p>In the teaching, the Buddha explains that chanting it creates merit, or good fortune. Buddhists all over the world chant <em>The Diamond Sutra</em> today, in the same way as it has been chanted for over a millennium. They do this to create merit.</p>
<p>Usually this precious work is kept in a vault in the British Library. It might go on display occasionally, but it’s not likely to stay out for long. Paper is a delicate material and doesn’t react well to light, so it is best if it’s kept inside its wooden box in a special vault—where gas rather than water is sprayed in the event of a fire—with the other most precious books in the British Library.</p>
<h4>5. <em>Alicia</em> (1965–67), a mural by Joan Miró and Josep Lloréns Artigas - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City</h4>
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<p><em>HarperCollins</em></p>
<p>Inside the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, there is a piece of art that every visitor has passed. But very few people know it is there, and even fewer have ever seen it. It’s a mural, called <em>Alicia</em>, created by the Spanish surrealist artist Joan Miró with the help of his lifelong friend, the ceramicist Josep Lloréns Artigas, and his son. They made it out of 190 ceramic tiles, which they hand painted. It is fairly large—taller than you, and far wider: over 8 feet high and 19 feet wide. It lives behind a white wall, where the curators of the museum keep an eye on it through a secret window to make sure that it's okay.</p>
<p>Harry F. Guggenheim, who was in charge of the museum at the time, commissioned it in 1963 in honour of his wife Alicia Patterson Guggenheim who died that year. In 1967, a party was thrown to celebrate its unveiling on the wall, just inside the entrance to the famous museum, at the foot of the spiral ramp. For many years, the mural was the first thing visitors to the museum would see.</p>
<p>Anyone who knew that <em>Alicia</em> was a tribute to Alicia Patterson Guggenheim may have wondered why Miró poetically wove the name Alice into his abstract creation of shapes and colours, rather than Alicia. Well, Miró was quite mysterious about this; he knew he had been asked to make a tribute to Alicia, but didn’t give any reason for writing Alice instead.</p>
<p>In 1969, it was covered over temporarily during an exhibition, as the curator of the show felt that it disturbed the aesthetics of the space. Because the red, black, blue and grey mural with spirited motifs is such an impressive, timeless piece, it is difficult to exhibit it without it taking over. This is especially true because it hangs on the first wall any visitor to the museum will see. That curator was obviously onto something because, since then, the mural has rarely been on display. Most curators want a blank canvas of white wall for their exhibitions, and usually hang the first artwork of each exhibition on the temporary wall that covers the precious mural.</p>
<p>If you go to an exhibition at the fabulous museum, imagine it there, twinkling behind the wall as you ascend the Guggenheim spiral.</p>
<h4>6. Original Draft of "Auld Lang Syne," Robert Burns (1759–96) - The Mitchell Library, Glasgow</h4>
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<p></em><em>HarperCollins</em></p>
<p>All over the world, on New Year’s Eve, we sing "Auld Lang Syne"—which is a bit strange, considering how few of us know what <em>auld lang syne</em> means ("old times’ sake"), or why we cross our arms and hold hands with our neighbour while singing. Still, it is a fun thing to do, and makes everyone glow with bittersweet hope and nostalgia.</p>
<p>The tradition all came about thanks to a piece of paper that is two centuries old and now lives in a black, combination lock briefcase in a secret location within the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, took this piece of paper, laid it out on his writing desk and wrote the words to "Auld Lang Syne" upon it in brown ink, using a sharpened feather. It’s best that the paper is kept out of the light, because it is already yellowed, and so fragile it looks as if it might turn into a puff of smoke if you were to blow on it. I couldn’t look at it without singing the words silently in my head.</p>
<p>The song spread across the world as the Scottish people did; they took their traditional song with them, and it caught on. The curators of the library told me that, in Scotland, the song is sung at the end of all kinds of events and celebrations, not just at New Year.</p>
<p>"Auld Lang Syne" really only became the global New Year’s anthem in 1929 because of Canadian singer Guy Lombardo. From 1929 to 1959, Lombardo performed a live radio broadcast from the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on New Year’s Eve. Each year, his orchestra, the Royal Canadians, would play "Auld Lang Syne" as part of the celebration. It was thanks to radio that the song became a real tradition. Next New Year’s Eve, when you begin singing, "Should auld acquaintance be forgot…" perhaps you will remember the piece of paper that lives quietly, inside a briefcase, in the library in Glasgow. I know I will.</p>
<p><em>The Secret Museum by Molly Oldfield (HarperCollins) is available now for ipad, £12.99. You can buy it <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/the-secret-museum/id581942068?mt=11" target="_blank">here</a>.</em></p>
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<span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">May 3, 2013 - 6:00pm</span></span>
</span>Mon, 06 May 2013 16:20:05 +0000Erin50397 at http://mentalfloss.com